


Death To The Radio Host

by somethingscarlet13



Category: Night Vale - Fandom, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blood, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:58:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7090552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingscarlet13/pseuds/somethingscarlet13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strex has gotten their hands on the voice of Night Vale</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death To The Radio Host

The tall Hispanic man shrugged out of his spotless white lab coat and hung it on the hook bolted into the wall. He had finished his work for the day; all that was left was some cleaning up that shouldn’t take him more than half an hour; beakers to put away, notes to sort, etc.  
Carlos ran a hand through his wavy mocha hair, remembering with a smile how Cecil swooned over it while on air. T hat radio announcer is such a dork, C arlos thought, smiling to himself as he rifled through some carefully taken notes on the Whispering Forest.  
He was dressed simply in a light green shirt that complimented his caramel skin and some rather utilitarian jeans that already had a gigantic hole in the knee from a rather unfortunate incident where he had used a halfdiluted acidic substance instead of laundry detergent. How Cecil had laughed....  
Talking of which, his radio show was due to start soon. Carlos loved listening to it on his way home, sometimes humming along to the weather if he knew the song. Glancing at his phone, he frowned as he remembered that time wasn’t real in Night Vale. When did that show start? If time wasn’t real, and if the sun didn’t set on time, did that mean that sunsets weren’t real?  
Stop it, C arlos told himself sternly. The scientific part of his mind often ran away with him. Stooping to put a manila folder, held shut with a binder clip, into the bottom drawer of his file cabinet, Carlos stifled a yawn. He had been up late last night, and he was looking forward to getting home quickly so that he could flop into his favorite old armchair, kick out the footrest, and sit with a cup of coffee, letting Cecil’s deep voice, warm like an embrace, waft around the room like a sweet scent.  
Where are my keys? C arlos thought, feeling his pockets. Nope. No keys....he hadn’t put them down somewhere in the lab.....his office! Scatterbrained scientist, Carlos thought, remembering the teasing term that Cecil referred to him as whenever he misplaced something.  
As he walked toward the closed door of his office, Carlos began to notice a strange smell. It was salty, with a hint of the foul odor of metal. It smelled oddly familiar, too....an unpleasant bit of childhood...and it was coming from his office....  
At that moment, his leg shot out from under him and he fell hard, jarring his tailbone and elbow painfully as he crashed into the linoleum tiled floor. “Ow! What the..” Carlos sat up, a searing pain lacing up his arm and into his shoulder, coursing up through his tailbone and into his back. It had been quite a tumble, he thought, straightening his glasses, but what had he fallen on?  
A quick glance at the floor revealed something that made him feel like his organs had suddenly gone to Tahiti, that gutwrench that occurred when plunging down on a roller coaster.  
Blood.  
Not a lot, or at least not the most he had ever seen. A thin rivulet about the thickness of one of his fingers was slowly oozing toward him like a liquid snail. A warm, crimson snail that slid from underneath the closed door to his office.  
Carlos’s heart began to thunder in his chest and he yanked at the handle. Locked.  
Cursing, he looked around wildly and snatched up a metal lab stool, then hefted it shoulder high and brought it slamming viciously against the handle. CLANG! CLANG! The handle dented and Carlos hit harder, his face contorting into a hard and stony mask of fear and desperation. CLANG! CLANG! “Break, curse you!” Carlos shouted, striking with more ferocity. “Break!”  
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CRUNCH!  
The handle separated from the door in an echoing crack, the wood splitting into jagged splinters, and the mutilated silver steel door knob fell to the ground.  
Hurling the stool to the side and sending it careening noisily around the floor, Carlos slammed into the door like a linebacker with permission to kill. The door broke off its hinges and smashed into the floor, making blood spray out to the sides like geysers of crimson water.  
Carlos stopped dead, and his brown skin turned paler than death faster than a traffic light could change from red to green. “No....no......NO! GOD, NO! CEEEECIIIIILLL!”  
He charged into the room and fell to his knees beside the limp body of the radio host, not caring that bloodCecil’s bloodwas soaking into his jeans. Carlos yanked Cecil toward him, pressing his ear roughly to the man’s chest, searching for a heartbeat, no matter how faint.  
Cecil’s shirt was sopping with blood that blossomed from a wound in his stomach and his head lolled limply onto his shoulder like a doll with a rip in the neck. “Cecil! Wake up! Cecil!” Carlos, head still over Cecil’s unbeating heart, shook  
him a little, hoping to jar him into consciousness.  
All Cecil did was flop around like a wet rag.  
Carlos grew very still, his glasses fogging up with the steamy haze of tears that  
glazed his deep hazel eyes. “Cecil.....oh no.....” He wiped his eyes with his scarletsoaked sleeve, and soon he had red tears mingling with the clear droplets that streamed down his face in rivers of grief, rippling in the pool around them.  
“Cecil, I’m sorry,” Carlos wept, holding him close, his forehead resting on the radio host’s shoulder. “I’m sorry! I should have been able to save you! Who did this to you?” He pulled away and turned Cecil’s face toward him, then yelled in horror, revulsion, shock, and rage so deep that there were no words to describe it.  
Something had been stitched over Cecil’s mouth. Sewn into his skin. It was a triangle, made out of tough yellow cloth, like one would see in a logo stitched onto overalls. Carlos reached up and touched the obscene thing, his fingertips trembling like leaves in a gale. The yellow triangle had a blazing orange S in the middle like the sign of doom itself, and beneath it in very small black letters were the words STREXCORP SYNERNISTS INC.  
“No.....oh, you sick dogs....” Carlos whispered, the pain and anger blending together to create the voice of a wild and deadly force that could not be controlled nor reconciled. His hazel eyes burned behind his glasses, and though they were still glazed with tears that streamed down his face in twin rivers, they burned with a dark fury that would be sated only when the guilty blood ran in torrents.  
Leaning down, Carlos softly brushed his mouth over Cecil’s but they were separated by the horrendous logo of Strexcorp. Lightly stroking Cecil’s limp hair off his bloodless face, Carlos leaned closer to him and whispered, “Because I couldn’t save you I’ll promise you this, Cecil. I will find whoever did this to you. I will not rest until I find them and make them pay for what they’ve done.”  
He could almost feel Cecil’s hand on his shoulder, hear that wonderful voice murmuring, “I know you will, Carlos. I believe in you.”  
Carlos looked down at the man who meant more to him than the world and then his face crumpled. He drew Cecil close to him and began to rock slowly back and forth, his forehead on Cecil’s hair, tears dripping from his eyes, and he stayed like that, sitting on the floor with the corpse in his arms, weeping quietly until the sun rose in the morning.


End file.
